Cata had less players than BC, clearing DS which is what we are talking about here needs to be compared to Karazhan due to accessibility, not the 5% that cleared SW which is a totally different number due to being linear raiding vs segmented.

Without the Karazhan numbers you simply can't make the comparison as you lack the data point to do so.

I agree with you but you also can't compare Karazhan with DS. Karazhan was there the whole expansion and DS wasn't. There is simply no way to compare the amount or percentage of raiders between the two expansions.

EDIT: (Never mind, that was exactly your point :P)

The percentages Blizzard uses are just for show anyway. "20% cleared DS, it's a success!". They are not going to give us exact numbers all the time because that could just create negative publicity. And still, numbers are not everything. 80% can set foot into LFR but that doesn't mean all those people liked it or not.

---------- Post added 2012-10-04 at 02:16 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Shinzai

To be counted as a raider you have to clear content. I stated this already. Being a dungeon runner who wanders into raids some times does not = raider.

Unless you're saying that they're just not catering for the people who can't actually raid, but try to anyway. What people are you talking about at this point?

Since when do you need to clear content to be a raider. I guess I wasn't a raider in TBC. I did enter raids 5 times a week but I didn't kill KJ (everything up to KJ but not KJ himself) so I am not a raider.

There is no real definition of a WoW raider. I would say someone who does an attempt at a raid (not go in and out) regularly is a raider.

They can say: we are making content that only 5% of our players can clear it, while a lot others are trying and failing, maybe our tuning is too high.

Again those 5% is just Sunwell, arguably the hardest instance they made, perhaps 15% cleared BT, we have no idea hence your making assumptions based on Blizzard propaganda.

Originally Posted by Crashdummy

They chose the second one, i would have made the same. therefore why i said many of us thinking that having people doing the same raid 2 years is unacceptable.

We have no idea how many was stuck in Kara for 2 years if any at all, if only 1% was stuck is it fair to you that everyone else should have a diminished game because of it, perhaps not even all of those 1% would want help but instead preferred to work on their game.

Originally Posted by Crashdummy

If i understood your points well, you would have took the first choice, which means that to you, having a lot of people locked in one raid for two years is fine because "they need to L2P".

I dont think we will ever agree on this subject.

I suggested a way for it to work a while back, they could quite simply add a ICC style buff to old tiers when releasing new in a linear progression model to help the few that just couldn't get past the challenge and increase it with every tier released, obviously make it optional and tie majority of achievements to not using the buff.

The current way that Blizzard does things deprives skilled players of their content in favor of herding the lesser skilled once through the same content over and over, something that I find way worse than being stuck mid progression somewhere while still having a clear goal to strive for. Not to mention how bad segmented progression is for the majority of players content wise.

Since when do you need to clear content to be a raider. I guess I wasn't a raider in TBC. I did enter raids 5 times a week but I didn't kill KJ (everything up to KJ but not KJ himself) so I am not a raider.

There is no real definition of a WoW raider. I would say someone who does an attempt at a raid (not go in and out) regularly is a raider.

You beat *a* raid. That makes you a raider - you cleared that piece of content. As I said, if we don't base being a raider on clearing something, then anyone who killed the first boss of a raid because it was easy automatically registers as a raider.

You beat *a* raid. That makes you a raider - you cleared that piece of content. As I said, if we don't base being a raider on clearing something, then anyone who killed the first boss of a raid because it was easy automatically registers as a raider.

Players that regularly kill a boss in a raid are raiding hence should count as raiders, not that it matters much these days where you can't possibly fail to clear a raid as some descent players will carry you in LFR.

Originally Posted by Shinzai

How many players did it require to clear Kara?

And what was that supposed to prove? If you can't provide factual numbers you can't prove either way.

Again those 5% is just Sunwell, arguably the hardest instance they made, perhaps 15% cleared BT, we have no idea hence your making assumptions based on Blizzard propaganda.

We have no idea how many was stuck in Kara for 2 years if any at all, if only 1% was stuck is it fair to you that everyone else should have a diminished game because of it, perhaps not even all of those 1% would want help but instead preferred to work on their game.

I suggested a way for it to work a while back, they could quite simply add a ICC style buff to old tiers when releasing new in a linear progression model to help the few that just couldn't get past the challenge and increase it with every tier released, obviously make it optional and tie majority of achievements to not using the buff.

The current way that Blizzard does things deprives skilled players of their content in favor of herding the lesser skilled once through the same content over and over, something that I find way worse than being stuck mid progression somewhere while still having a clear goal to strive for. Not to mention how bad segmented progression is for the majority of players content wise.

---------- Post added 2012-10-04 at 02:19 PM ----------

Proof please.

We dont know the exact %, true, but it could be only a 7% that cleared BT instead of that 15% you say. My point is, if only 1 person was struck two years in a single raid while attempting to move on, i would have considered that a failure.

I dont think the buff idea is a good one, people dont want your spoils to be given to them like lord did with their servants in the past, they want CONTENT for them.

The current way of Blizzard doesnt deprive skilled players of content. Skilled players have said that LK H 25 and Ragnaros Heroic are the two hardest fight in WoW's history, the challenging content for skilled players is there, its just not in Normal raids but in Heroic ones.

Can you link me your mgv progress mister "i'm so cool and pro that panda content is piss easy for me"?
I hear even MGV normal is quite a bit of challenge. Go break a few bones there and come back talking fairy tales about vanilla/tbc.

Players that regularly kill a boss in a raid are raiding hence should count as raiders, not that it matters much these days where you can't possibly fail to clear a raid as some descent players will carry you in LFR.

And what was that supposed to prove? If you can't provide factual numbers you can't prove either way.

Anyway, heading to the couch to watch Prometheus 3D now so laters...

So. Karazhan, a 10 man raid, available for an entire expansion, with a higher population and therefore, if we go by your understanding, a larger number of raiders. Which also therefore have to have been at a higher skill level than today's raiders, Karazhan is not the most cleared instance.

Can you prove that? I still don't know what the hell you're basing your "TBC had more raiders" concept on. There are more raid guilds in WotLK and Cata than there ever were in TBC.

What you without fail, fail to grasp, is the fact that I'm not proving that tBC had more raiders, but that I'm disproving your statement that the percentage of people that cleared the last raid is an indication of the total amount of people that raided actively. But I think I'm catching on to your reasoning.

You haven't seen a tBC raid if your life depended on it and due to this, you have absolutely no clue about the difference between past raiding and current raiding.

Current raiding is linear, while past raiding is progressive, or vertical to make it easier. With that mindset, you could argue that not having cleared the latest instance means you're not a raider. Sadly, or luckily from my pov, that isn't the case with tBC. In Vanilla and tBC, raids progressed like this in terms of difficulty, lowest being the easiest:

Every time a new tier is released, the previous tier becomes easier, or more accessible due to gear inflation. So in the current system, I agree, if you didn't finish a raid, you can't call yourself a raider. In the past content however, difficulty scaled without gear inflation, so you had to actually fight for each piece. Any completed raid instance made you a raider and not just the last one.

So once more, your perception of how tht percentage should be interpreted, is off due to your current experience.

What you without fail, fail to grasp, is the fact that I'm not proving that tBC had more raiders, but that I'm disproving your statement that the percentage of people that cleared the last raid is an indication of the total amount of people that raided actively. But I think I'm catching on to your reasoning.

You haven't seen a tBC raid if your life depended on it and due to this, you have absolutely no clue about the difference between past raiding and current raiding.

Current raiding is linear, while past raiding is progressive, or vertical to make it easier. With that mindset, you could argue that not having cleared the latest instance means you're not a raider. Sadly, or luckily from my pov, that isn't the case with tBC. In Vanilla and tBC, raids progressed like this in terms of difficulty, lowest being the easiest:

Every time a new tier is released, the previous tier becomes easier, or more accessible due to gear inflation. So in the current system, I agree, if you didn't finish a raid, you can't call yourself a raider. In the past content however, difficulty scaled without gear inflation, so you had to actually fight for each piece. Any completed raid instance made you a raider and not just the last one.

So once more, your perception of how tht percentage should be interpreted, is off due to your current experience.

you lost all cred when you placed ZG below MC. MC was EASY to the 9th degree. Only domo and rag were of any difficulty.

raid progression has changed but in MOP they are bringing it back to some degree. You need to clear vaults then heart of fear then terrace. I hope that stays (LFR can be setup to do that with no issues) that way people would be then forced to do content in order and it means all the content gets seen.

personally having done all the raid content the game had (up till firelands in cata and ds normal/heroic as i had quit the game and just came back for mop) I would say its improved a lot.

I would like there to be some raid progression but no attunements for the love of god. keep it so you have to kill one raid to unlock the next (maybe have it so if one character has killed a raid then your alts can skip that raid and move to a higher one if it has the gear?)

In every game you play you have (for the majority) EASY/MEDIUM/HARD etc. Why should wow be ANY different?

Example, I played half life 1 and 2 on the hardest difficulty. Someone else plays it on medium another person plays it on easy. I now rage on the forums saying these people should not be playing this game as they cant beat it on the hardest setting.

Wow has always been a casual game. It was the casual version of EQ and UO (im sure someone else said this too). TBC expanded upon this and also made changes to "support" classes like shamans paladins etc these classes could now DPS in raids but not to the same numbers as mages etc. They kept attunements provided a new progression path for players in heroic dungeons. They provided pvp progression in battle grounds and now arenas.

They then removed attunements as they were the single most annoying thing for a raiding guild who needed to get into the next tier or get new members into a current one. They put dailies into tbc to give players a way of making some gold and providing more content.

Wrath again expanded upon this, made raids easier from the get go, and they provided a way to make fights harder (3 drakes) this lead to ulduar where you had the hardmode system (my preferred system I want to try hardmodes from day 1 and not have to clear normal first) totc was a horrible raid imo..... then icc came along and they further changed the hardmode system and it was heavily gated (much like sunwell was) heroics were far easier and rep was easier to gain with the tabard system.

Cata again changed things but made it far MORE hardcore than wrath was. Heroics were hard like tbc heroics raids were very hard for most pugs and normal mode raids were quite a challenge. Heroics were just brutal. firelands and dragon soul I cant comment on for normal/heroic as I never did them as I quit the game and came back for mop.

Mop so far seems to be trying to strike a balance. Heroics are easy like wrath BUT theres challenge modes which are very hard. Raiding on 25man last night and the 1st boss was quite a challenge most of our raids not really raided in a long time so there were a number of wipes. (going back there tonight to get a kill hopefully) apart from that mops too early to tell (lots of dailies pet battles and other content still to do)

Different game, different rules. By rule of thumb, if you didn't play a game on ultra hard, you suck. that said, it's the gear inflation that is such a turn-off, not several difficulties. I have a problem with the fact that 2 months from now, people will be running around in the gear that I actually had to put up a fight for and they didn't even lift a finger.

Removal of attunements is not making a game more casual. It's taking the tedious out. It doesn't do anything with the gameplay.

Improving class mechanics is not making the game more casual, it's improving the quality of the game.

Did you do ICC HC 25 man before the buffs? I wonder.

---------- Post added 2012-10-04 at 03:31 PM ----------

Originally Posted by khalltusk

you lost all cred when you placed ZG below MC. MC was EASY to the 9th degree. Only domo and rag were of any difficulty.

Personally found it easier. ZG was released later on, but it's a 10 man instance with doable tactics. I could have placed it on par with MC, if that better suits your taste, but it's arguing over semantics. Quite a waste of time.

[edit] could have been a 20 man instance now I mention it :P Oh how times change.

We dont know the exact %, true, but it could be only a 7% that cleared BT instead of that 15% you say. My point is, if only 1 person was struck two years in a single raid while attempting to move on, i would have considered that a failure.

That's my point though, we don't know how many raided in Bc, it could be a very similar number to the 20% that cleared DS for all we know, without any factual numbers we just can't know, and as I said there are ways to prevent what you refer to as a failure without sacrificing content for others.

Originally Posted by Crashdummy

I dont think the buff idea is a good one, people dont want your spoils to be given to them like lord did with their servants in the past, they want CONTENT for them.

And they are given them less with the current system, really?

Originally Posted by Crashdummy

The current way of Blizzard doesnt deprive skilled players of content. Skilled players have said that LK H 25 and Ragnaros Heroic are the two hardest fight in WoW's history, the challenging content for skilled players is there, its just not in Normal raids but in Heroic ones.

The buff hit DS when my guild was at 6/8 heroic progression as we only raided 2 days a week hence deprived me of content, I read several posters that only raided normal that felt just as cheated as well. Now if heroic raids stop being nerfed I'd agree with you that we're not deprived of content.

Originally Posted by Vorkreist

Can you link me your mgv progress mister "i'm so cool and pro that panda content is piss easy for me"?
I hear even MGV normal is quite a bit of challenge. Go break a few bones there and come back talking fairy tales about vanilla/tbc.

Quit WoW the day the nerfs hit DS, for other progression you have a link in my sig, knock your self out, I'd start with FoS on my pally.

Originally Posted by Shinzai

So. Karazhan, a 10 man raid, available for an entire expansion, with a higher population and therefore, if we go by your understanding, a larger number of raiders. Which also therefore have to have been at a higher skill level than today's raiders, Karazhan is not the most cleared instance.

Now you lost me, this post really makes no sense what so ever to me. As for the bold part all I can agree on there is that it's not percentage wise but could very well be numbers wise.

No, the statistics were right. With what super powers can you prove otherwise?

No one is saying that the statistics are wrong, it's all in the presentation.

Blizzard state that in TBC only 5% of players ever killed a certain boss in SWP, but they don't mention the highly relevant fact that because raids were in a linear format, ie you had to clear Karazhan to gear for SWP/TK where you geared for BT/MH then finally you were geared for SWP, it was the arse end of an extremely long gearing process.

Then they come out and tell us 20% cleared Dragon Soul, but again they don't mention that thanks to the the fact that they have toned down raid difficulty and the Looking For Raid tool further reduces the challenges and that segmented raiding makes it easier to gear (because effectively you can buy the last tier of gear rapidly via dungeons) it is significantly easier to gear up for and kill nerfed bosses.

Originally Posted by Crashdummy

Because in Cata they tried to cater for people like Alyssa. That's why its the first expansion in losing subs.

Well they said that they were going to, but they didn't. Instead we got the LFR tool, which was a massive step in the opposite direction, and more normal/hard mode encounters, which the 'hardcore' raiders don't want. In reality the rot had set in during WotLK, people could feel the changes and combined with more and more decent MMOs appearing, people began leaving.

Originally Posted by Shinzai

Cata had less players than TBC. More people cleared DS than any raid ever - stated by Blizzard, based on their internal server statistics.

So therefore the number of raiders has irrefutably increased. I still don't understand how this can be argued.

I refer you to my above response regarding the presentation of the figures and omitted facts.

Originally Posted by Shinzai

No no. Dragon Soul is the "MOST CLEARED RAID EVER". Not end-raid not hardest raid of tier. RAID EVER. See the difference?

So what you're saying that a raid that appeared during an expansion when Blizzard have committed to a 'Everyone must see every piece of content' policy and as such have both made raid content easier and just in time for the 'most cleared raid ever' create a new easy mode under the guise of Looking For Raid, that instance is the most cleared raid ever?

What you without fail, fail to grasp, is the fact that I'm not proving that tBC had more raiders, but that I'm disproving your statement that the percentage of people that cleared the last raid is an indication of the total amount of people that raided actively. But I think I'm catching on to your reasoning.

You haven't seen a tBC raid if your life depended on it and due to this, you have absolutely no clue about the difference between past raiding and current raiding.

Current raiding is linear, while past raiding is progressive, or vertical to make it easier. With that mindset, you could argue that not having cleared the latest instance means you're not a raider. Sadly, or luckily from my pov, that isn't the case with tBC. In Vanilla and tBC, raids progressed like this in terms of difficulty, lowest being the easiest:

Every time a new tier is released, the previous tier becomes easier, or more accessible due to gear inflation. So in the current system, I agree, if you didn't finish a raid, you can't call yourself a raider. In the past content however, difficulty scaled without gear inflation, so you had to actually fight for each piece. Any completed raid instance made you a raider and not just the last one.

So once more, your perception of how tht percentage should be interpreted, is off due to your current experience.

What on Earth are you even talking about now? Kara was the entry level raid. It was the raid to beat, even if you got nothing else done. Are you seriously suggesting that people who couldn't beat Kara just jumped onto far harder raids? Like, "Screw Kara, it's too hard, let's go do ZA or BT instead."?

Read what I typed already. Dragon Soul had the most players to actually clear it. That's why I'm using Kara as the comparison piece. Dragon Soul had the most people clear it. Regardless of where the raid was introduced in the current expansion. Dragon Soul had more people clear it than Kara did. Therefore, it would require more people to have beaten Kara for there to have been more raiders at any point during TBC. Regardless of whether they were raiding at launch or at SW's release.

You've just completely changed your point and argument. I told you already that I raided in TBC, though not in Classic. I raided TBC->WotLK->Cata and will do in MoP too. Out right making things up is not going to make you right.

So what you're saying that a raid that appeared during an expansion when Blizzard have committed to a 'Everyone must see every piece of content' policy and as such have both made raid content easier and just in time for the 'most cleared raid ever' create a new easy mode under the guise of Looking For Raid, that instance is the most cleared raid ever?

Well I wonder why...

And that is the whole point. Even with the absolute most people possible raiding, it came to a grand total of 20%.

Last edited by Shinzai; 2012-10-04 at 04:21 PM.
Reason: formatting ate some text

And that is the whole point. Even with the absolute most people possible raiding, it came to a grand total of 20%.

Ignoring the fact that the game was down to 9mil at this point, quite possibly because a lot of raiders had left in disgust, you're still not seeing how many people are affected by raiding.

How many didn't complete the DS instance?
How many play because their friends/family are raiders, but don't raid?
How many benefit from raiding because raiders buy their potions, gems, crafted items, etc?
How many people are getting faster queues with experienced players in dungeons because of raiders?

Assuming that only 20% of players are affected by raids is a mistake. Can you imagine WoW without raids? I can't, the game would not be where it is today.